Reginald Lindo returned to the study after letting him out, and, dropping into the nearest chair, looked round with a sigh. Yet, the sigh notwithstanding, he was a hundredfold less unhappy now than he had been at dinner or while looking over that number of “Punch.” His friend’s visit had both cheered and softened him. His thoughts no longer dwelt on the earl’s injustice, the desertion of his friends, or the humiliations in store for him; but went back again to the warning Kate Bonamy had given him. Thence it was not unnatural that they should revert to the beginning of his acquaintance with her. He pictured her at Oxford, he saw her scolding Daintry in the stiff drawing-room, or coming to meet him in the Red Lane; and, the veil of local prejudice torn from his eyes by the events of the day, he began to discern that this girl, with all the drawbacks of her surroundings, was the fairest, bravest, and noblest girl he had met at Claversham, or, for aught he could remember, elsewhere. His eyes glistened. He was sure—so sure that he would have staked his life on the result—that for all the earls in England Kate Bonamy would not have deserted him! He had reached this point, and Jack had been gone some five minutes or more, when he was startled by a loud rap at the house door. He stood up and, wondering who it could be at this hour, took a candle and went into the hall. Setting the candlestick on a table, he opened the door, and there, to his astonishment, was Jack come back again! “Capital!” said the barrister, slipping in and shutting the door behind him, as though his return were not in the least degree extraordinary, “I thought it was you. Look here; there is one thing I forget to ask you, Lindo. Where did you get the address of those lawyers?” He asked the question so earnestly, and his face, now it could be seen by the strong light of the candle at his elbow, wore so curious an expression, that the rector was for a moment quite taken aback. “They are good people, are they not?” he said, wondering much. “Oh, yes, the firm is good enough,” Jack answered impatiently. “But who gave you their address?” “Clode,” the rector answered. “I went round to his lodgings and he wrote it down for me.” “At his lodgings?” cried the barrister. “To be sure.” “Ah! then look here,” Jack replied, laying his hand on Lindo’s sleeve and looking up at him with an air of peculiar seriousness—“just tell me once more, so that I may have no doubt about it: Are you sure that from the time you docketed those letters until now you have never removed them—from this house, I mean?” “Never!” “Never let them go out of the house?” “Never!” answered the rector firmly. “I am as certain of it as a man can be certain of anything.”